


shame is the shadow of love

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Future Fic, Introspection, Not Rosalind Price friendly, POV Phil Coulson, Phil Coulson Feels, Phil Coulson's Sex Issues, Romance, Wet Dream, references to Coulson/Price
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 23:54:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5225987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not what Coulson was expecting.</p>
<p>(post 3x07 super angsty thing)</p>
            </blockquote>





	shame is the shadow of love

**Author's Note:**

> Title from PJ Harvey's "Shame".

It's nothing like he remembers it. Not the excitement of short-lived, on-the-edge connections with the men and women in his line of work, nor the easy familiarity with Audrey. But it's enough, it's more than he thought he'd found.

It's a first of sorts and maybe he's changed. He remembers being bolder before. Now: lights killed, he doesn't fully undress, he doesn't talk, there's a quietness that's new in him, he wants to protect some things from view – his scar, his arm, his fear. Rosalind doesn't know him well enough to tell the difference and that's a fucking blessing, that's the part where Coulson thinks he's made the right choice.

Sex was never a big deal and all his life it had come easy to him but he had imagined that, after all this time, (this being a first of sorts), it would be more momentous than this, somehow. He doesn't know what he was expecting and this is fine (this is more than fine, this is all he gets) but it's not what he expected. He tries to excuse it – he knows Rosalind is hiding things from him, this spy game between them, and then his own complicated reasons. He tried to get back to a time before (before what? his death? Hydra? _Skye_? no, he tried not to put his finger on exactly what). The drinks in an elegant hotel bar, the inane talk. Rosalind firing classified agency anecdotes one after the other and it felt like he was that person again, when he was shallow and light and _whole_ , and it was fun to pretend he was still part of that world and he thought it would be okay.

It wasn't okay.

All the things he had hoped to push away by sleeping with Rosalind come back to bite into him deeper: the idea that he should be dead, the idea that he's running out of last chances, the idea that he's not human anymore and even if he were he'd only be a chunk of what a human is supposed to be, the idea that he can't compartimentalize and he can't reach out either, he thought maybe she could help with that.

It's not okay but it _has to be_ so he pushes it, he pushes it until it works well enough for him (and hopefully for her). Afterwards she rolls to her back and makes a glib comment Coulson finds charming in the moment but will forget about by the morning. He doesn't tease back. 

It's not good and it's not painful and that's probably more than he deserves right now.

 

+

 

He has this one dream about Daisy some days after that, the one he wakes up from ashamed– and blissfully alone.

In the dream he is resting in his quarters and Daisy suddenly comes in. She's wearing just a white shirt and Coulson asks what's wrong, why is she here. He never hears her explanation, even though her lips move, like his whole room is suddenly underwater. She flings herself at him and covers his mouth with hers, the kind of kiss awake he'd never even contemplate. But in his dream Coulson is immediately hard, her body pressed against his hands, her teeth tearing into him, her powerful legs pinning him down to the bed made ghostly by incongruent softness, and shame washes over him, making him gasp under her fierce kisses. In his dream he still calls her _Skye_.

"I don't want to think about you," he says, his lips darting across her neck, more honest than he is when he's awake. "But I can't stop."

The room darkens until he can barely see the corners of the bed, until he can only see Daisy in front of him; the room smells of being trapped, of damp concrete, and Coulson grabs the back of her shirt, there's only him and her and she's here and then her clothes fall away with dream logic and she's warm like a fever he can't recover from.

Dream!Daisy works her hand into his boxers, wraps her hand around his cock. It's all wrong, he doesn't want anybody to touch him like this, and risk discovering he's not human. It's just a dream but it still scares him, to be touched. And yet, he's hard and wanting this and he grabs Daisy by the hips, lining their bodies together, his cock throbbing – not sure if that's the dream or his real self, struggling in his sleep. Her hand cups his face and forces him to look up.

"You don't deserve me," Daisy tells him and this time Coulson can hear every word. "You know that. Don't you, Phil?"

And god _he knows_ , even in a dream he knows, but that doesn't stop him from thrusting up as she lowers her body onto him. It's painful and perfect and something he knows he'll never have in his life.

He wakes up with a jolt, scared, unable to ignore the significance of this happening _now_ , right after, covered in a thin film of sweat that brings him back to the days when he was carving on the wall. It's not that different, needing her, needing to find out what those symbols meant. That's how he knows it's something wrong.

 

+

 

Daisy's split lip sums up the situation at the end of it pretty well.

It all went to hell and people got hurt. Betrayal (his, _hers_ ). Lincoln pushed to a horrible mistake. Ward collecting the winnings at the last moment. 

He's on the floor, alive but catching his breath.

That's a good way of putting it too: they're alive but catching their breath.

But people still got hurt.

She got hurt.

The blood on her lips (Coulson wasn't talking about that).

Daisy catches him looking at her mouth. She wipes the blood away with the back of her hand.

"How many...?" Coulson asks.

She shakes her head. "Don't do that," she tells him. "This, specifically, wasn't your fault."

"What came before is."

Daisy stares at him with hard eyes.

"Do you even remember how this started?" she asks.

Coulson tries to think.

He accepted a drink from Rosalind. (Almost _begged_ for someone to take him home that night after all the pain he had witnessed, he remembers the feeling)

No, it wasn't that.

He thought she'd be a good ally. (He needed allies. _Desperatedly_.)

No. That wasn't it.

Daisy's picture in her phone. ( _What do I need to do to keep this quiet?_ )

Oh. 

(Oh.)

"Come on, Coulson," she says, impatiently, helping him to his feet. "We still have to clear the east wing. I could use a hand out there."

He's maybe too on-edge but... "No pun intended? Hopefully."

Daisy frowns at him. "Of course not. How could you–?"

She shakes her head and leads them to the door.

Of course not.

She would never.

Daisy doesn't own collectibles for seven thousand dollars – he's pretty sure everything she owns in the world doesn't amount to that. Daisy doesn't have a classic convertible car. She lost her van. And it was second hand (looking like fourth hand). Daisy doesn't own elegant suits and wouldn't know how to cut herself off people and wears her heart on her sleeve. 

No pun intended. Of course not.

Because Daisy would never.

And Coulson remembers his dream and asks himself how all this got started and comes up with the wrong answer again.

 

+

 

When things quieten down hours later they get a drink in his office.

Coulson winces at the expression, getting a drink. Because he did that with Rosalind and almost lost everything.

This is different.

This is between friends. And he's not even sure Daisy would call him that.

"Are you okay?" she asks, fixing his scotch herself.

It's unfair that she should ask him.

She pushes their chairs together, like they are about to have a heart-to-heart and she can't have that much space between them.

"Nothing bruised by my pride," Coulson says, trying to sound self-deprecating, upbeat, or at least like a competent boss. "And my ribs. And my cheek. And –"

"Okay, okay, we can compare war wounds later," Daisy stops him.

That sounds almost... almost flirty.

Coulson tries to smile. Taking a sip from his drink seems more appropriate.

"You didn't really answer my question," Daisy presses and it's not like Daisy to press like this. 

"I'll be fine."

She nods and takes a big gulp. He's not sure he's ever seen Daisy drink, not really, outside the rare beer with her team. He never thought about asking her to have a drink with him, never thought about her offering.

"I'm a sucker," he says quietly, because that's the only way to define what he's done.

"No, no, you just..."

She trails off. 

Daisy is trying to be kind but Coulson knows why she is coming up empty. She bites her cheek, like she feels guilty for not finding excuses for him.

"I remember your words," he says. "I remember you saying _I don't like where this is going_."

He watches her touch the back of her neck for a moment. 

"I was being... I was being petty," she says.

"You were being right."

"Coulson..."

"What?"

Daisy's expression is complicated. He's not sure he's seen it before. She looks like she is bracing herself for something.

"From where I'm standing..." she says. "She's the sucker."

Coulson stares at her. Before his brain can get into gear with a million _is she really saying...?_ indecisions he leans forward on his chair, resting his hand on Daisy's knee and touching his mouth to hers.

He tries to be gentle, remembers the cut on her lip, doesn't want to let his desperation take the helm. Daisy opens her mouth slightly, like she just wants to see what he would do. There's the aftertaste of alcohol on her lips and he keeps waiting for it to trigger bad memories but there's only Daisy with him here.

When he pulls back and looks at her eyes her expression is still a bit unfamiliar.

He fears he might have made a mistake.

(hurt her again)

"Did I read that right?" he asks, still breathing so close to her face that the universe doesn't quite make sense.

Daisy brings her hand to his cheek. Coulson leans into the gesture and goddamnit, he's been needing this, this warmth.

"Yeah, yeah, you did."

"What is it?"

"This has been exhausting," she says. "Not telling you stuff, knowing you were hiding things too. And this..."

She glances between them.

He nods, covering her hand with his. He doesn't even mind it's his prosthetic hand, it suddenly becomes _his hand_ after all this time, in an imperfect painful way, because he's touching her. When he looks at her Daisy's face is so trusting it threatens to break him.

"I dreamed about you," he tells her, ready to spill every horrible thing inside of him, because it's fair and because he doesn't want to be anything she doesn't know. "After... I dreamed about you."

He can tell from Daisy's expression that she knows what he means.

"Did you think about me that way?" she asks, so hopeful.

"Only when I'm asleep," he says, trying a sad smile.

"What was the dream like?"

"Horrible."

Daisy blinks. "Oh, wow, _thanks_."

"No, it was – I knew it was wrong."

"This is not wrong, Phil," she tells and he can hear the weariness in her voice, like she's too tired to fight this other battle, to argue some more against his stupidity. 

"I wanted you so much," he explains. The dream was painful. Waking up was painful. Wanting something he couldn't want for so long was worse. "It felt like I was betraying you."

"More than sleeping with someone else?" she asks, a bit sharply. She's earned that, he guesses.

But she's more cleared-eyed than he has ever been. She's not scared to put her finger on it. _How did this all start?_

"In the dream you told me I didn't deserve you," Coulson says.

Daisy chuckles at his words and his solemnity. "And I thought _I_ had issues."

She kisses him, Coulson gasping for air after it. She twists her fingers into his hair and pulls, pushing her tongue into his mouth. Coulson feels the ground give way under him, then he remembers he's sitting, then he fears he might still be dreaming. 

But this feels different.

This could never be a dream.

( _Dreams aren't that good_ and how he wishes he could spill every corny line and mean them all)

"Do you ever think about me that way?" he asks her in turn, pathetic, pathetic and stupid, and _unfair_ , he has no right to ask, no right to know, not after Rosalind. He brushes his lips against hers. "Do you ever think about me?"

Daisy scrapes her nails across his nape.

"Only when I'm awake," she says, sliding her mouth along his jaw.

He buries his hand into her hair, her name poised on his lips. _Daisy_ kisses him down his neck until he closes his eyes, sighing, grabbing at her knee again for balance.

"I'm never going to think I deserve you," he tells her. "But if you are okay with that..."

She looks up at him, holding his chin between her thumb and index. With a silent offer of entwined fingers and soft kisses she leads him out of this room.

 

+

 

It's a first of sorts, and maybe he hasn't changed that much.

It's different, to anything else he's ever felt – because that was always going to be the case with Daisy, how could it not.

It's not like his dream at all, either; the only thing in common is that her kisses are fierce, but they are gentle too. There's no shame when he touches her.

He swallows and thinks about turning off the lights, but he doesn't. He knows he's scared, but he lets that fear have a meaning beyond his fumbling and his hesitation.

"Hey. What happened to comparing our wounds?" Daisy says, light.

He draws a long breath before exposing his scar but he lets her see it, lets her run her fingertips over his heart with care. She thumbs the bruises on his ribs and kidney, where Banks landed his best blows. Coulson can feel the callouses of two years of overworking the shooting range. It's so different from a dream. It's not smooth or easy, but it's real, and it's warm.

"My turn then," she says, stepping out of her shirt and jeans.

Coulson snakes his hand down her body, draws the taut lines of her imposing abs and unlike his fake fabricated scar (pure cover-up) her stomach bears no trace of the gunshot wound Coulson can still see in his nightmares (the only way he's allowed her into his dreams until recently) and of course it's worse that there's not trace. He looks up and sees it in Daisy's eyes: she thinks it's worse too, scarier. He cups her face and kisses her mouth and her forehead, wishing it hadn't been him the one who did that to her, glad it wasn't anyone else.

He grabs her hips and leads her back towards the bed. He's never been very comfortable _leading_. He's mostly waited until things happened to him. It was a good strategy for decades, learning to want what happened to happen to him, learning not to want what didn't.

"I couldn't stop wanting you," he tells Daisy, non-sequitur and maybe a bit too much.

"Good, that's good," she replies, pragmatic and tender, running her hands over his back, his arms.

He's not quiet tonight. He says her name a lot. Maybe too much. He says other things – against her mouth, against her breasts, against her fingertips, against the crease of her hip, against her cunt, he tells her everything he's thinking and feeling. This is not what he expected. This leaves him raw.

Daisy takes control after a while and pushes him into the mattress and straddles his hips. He brings her hand between their bodies, presses it against his arousal. He needs to know: will it be painful? So unlike his dream that he doesn't recognize it when it happens, when Daisy twists her fingers around him and it just feels good and intimate, no shadow of anything else. 

"Just let me. Okay?" she says, propping herself on his hips and lining their bodies together.

He remembers reading the report on his own death, about how after being injected with the GH drug his heart grew back and he could never wrap his head around the idea, how is a heart supposed to grow back, it's alien genetics, yes, and he'd seen weirder things, but he couldn't even _picture it_.

Until now.

Until that first moment when Daisy slides over his body and sinks into him or he dissolves into her, he's not sure, but he can see it clearly now, what those death and recovery reports meant. Daisy smiles when he pushes the whole of his length inside her, like she has been waiting a long time for this or something equally absurd.

This feels different. This is not the adrenaline-fuelled post-mission trysts or the easy fantasy of Audrey or the cold comfort of sleeping with the enemy for all the right and wrong reasons. This is Daisy and he shouldn't have expected that it'd feel like anything that came before. It never has. Sex was never a big deal for Coulson and it always came easy to him. Not now.

It's perfect and painless.

He comes right after she does, mesmerized by the way she drops her head and her hair falls over her eyes, the way her bare shoulders shine with sweat and her fingertips dig deep into Coulson's hips, holding on. The way she smiles a joyful smile. He had tried not to look that close with his last lover, but now he can't stop staring, closer, closer, until he feels her eyelids touch his cheek.

They both roll on their sides afterwards and Daisy immediately stretches and pushes her body against his back, wrapping one arm around his middle. Coulson freezes a moment from surprise and then – well, of course Daisy likes cuddling. He relaxes, more touched than he should be because of her firm grip. He feels her breathe against him, her chest moving against his back like gentle waves.

"That used to be my line, you know?" Daisy says in a whisper.

Coulson looks at her over his shoulder. "What?"

"The _I don't deserve you_ stuff," she explains. "That was my whole life. I was convinced I didn't deserve anyone."

It aches. He can only imagine how much it aches for her.

"And now?" he asks, almost praying for the right answer, because he doesn't think he could stand hearing Daisy Johnson say she doesn't deserve love.

"No, I don't believe that anymore," she says in a resolute voice. She presses her lips against his shoulder-blade a moment. "I met you and you took me in and you looked at me in that way you usually do, like you're so glad I exist, and all changed. I knew that I deserved it."

She kisses the back of his neck.

This is different.

This hasn't happened before.

Her hand creeps up his side, brushing his ribcage, dropping to his stomach. Coulson takes her fingers and draws her hand towards where it belongs, over the scar on his heart.

"And I have always wanted to return the favor," she adds.

Coulson holds her palm against his chest, thinking: _maybe you already have_.


End file.
